Main menu

You are here

Thomas Jefferson

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks … will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered … The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. Thomas Jefferson

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.Thomas Jefferson

The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. Thomas Jefferson

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power to borrow money. Thomas Jefferson

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. James Madison

If (As the supreme court had recently inferred) Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. Andrew Jackson

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Abraham Lincoln

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to … provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. Theodore Roosevelt

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. Woodrow Wilson